Rachel sighed. Surely she was the most perverse girl ever to walk the streets of Creswell. But that realization came as no surprise. She had always been different. While the other miners’ daughters had cooked and cleaned or worked in the mine, she’d had her nose in a book. Instead of plying her needle, she was teaching herself French or penmanship. Instead of gossiping with the village girls, she was gossiped about. Too educated for a poor miner’s daughter and too poor to be anything else, she had never felt more like a misfit than now, when the one person who had understood her best and loved her most was gone.
While the other mourners gathered in small, murmuring clumps, Mrs. Tate put her arm around Rachel. There was so much difference in their respective heights that her arm curled around Rachel’s waist instead of her shoulders, but Rachel was grateful for the comfort all the same.
The ground had been too hard to dig very deep. As a result, filling her mother’s grave had taken little time. But what Rachel noticed, more than anything else, was the lack of color. Black on white predominated: the clothing of the mourners against the snow that covered everything else, except the gray, marble headstones that peeked through the crusty mantle.
Her mother deserved flowers—a bouquet of the red roses that were her favorite, Rachel thought. Instead, a wreath of evergreen boughs adorned Jillian’s grave, along with a few dried flowers from Mrs. Tate’s cellar.
The last of those who lingered filed past, squeezing Rachel’s hand as she stood in the clean, wintry air, smiling and nodding and fighting to keep her composure. Life would go on. For Geordie’s sake she had to be strong.
The sun slipped behind the roof of the church, throwing her in the shadow of the building’s ancient stone walls and causing her to shiver against the sudden chill. Geordie cried softly at her side, but now that she felt free to express her own grief, she couldn’t shed a tear. She just wanted to go home. Her mother wasn’t the cold, lifeless corpse they had just buried. Jillian was gone. No more would—
The sight of two riders on horseback caught Rachel’s eye, jerking her from her thoughts. They were well beyond the church, among the elm trees that lined the property, but they seemed to be watching her. Both figures were tall and broad-shouldered and rode fine, mahogany-colored horses. The proud bearing of one gave his identity away even though, at such a distance, Rachel couldn’t make out his features.
It was the Earl of Druridge. Why had he come? And where was his fancy carriage?
The villagers hadn’t noticed him, or Rachel would have heard their rumblings. Had he, and whoever was with him, just arrived?
She glanced at the retreating backs of the last of her friends and acquaintances as they wandered off toward their homes or businesses, some on foot, others on horseback. Mrs. Tate patted her waist, making cooing noises, and Geordie clung to her. The moment seemed frozen in time as she stared across the distance toward the man who appeared to regard her as openly as she did him.
“Shall I stay with ye tonight, luv?”
Mrs. Tate’s question hung in the air with the mist from her breath. She gave Rachel’s arm a shake, but even then Rachel was too preoccupied to answer.
“Who are they?” Mrs. Tate asked, following her gaze. “Do we know them?”
Rachel forced herself to look away from the earl and his companion and down at Geordie. “Let’s go home.”
“No!” Geordie’s bottom lip trembled anew. “I won’t go. I won’t leave Mum. I won’t!”
Kneeling, Rachel groomed her voice into a caress. “Mum’s not here, Geordie. She will live forever in our hearts, but she’s not here.”
A quick glance told Rachel the earl hadn’t moved. Mrs. Tate was eyeing him curiously. “It’s cold, and time to go,” she insisted.
“I don’t care. I want Mum, Rachel. I don’t want you!”
For the first time since the service ended, Rachel thought she might cry. “I know I am a poor substitute, little Geordie. But it will be all right. I promise you that. You will be safe with me. Now, be a good lad.”
She began to drag her brother away, but he resisted every step, digging his heels into the snow and refusing to make the journey easy. Mrs. Tate tried to entice him with the promise of a slice of hot custard once they reached home, but eventually she buried her face in her hands and cried with him. Only Rachel remained steadfast in her purpose. She couldn’t bear to think of her mother beneath the cold dirt and didn’t want to see the grave any longer. Not only that but she longed to get as far away as possible from the earl and his uncanny, all-seeing eyes. He had no right to witness her pain or to make a mockery of her mother’s funeral.
With gritted teeth, she fought her own emotions as much as Geordie’s obstinacy. “We are going home, and we are doing it right now!”
Mrs. Tate blinked in surprise, took Geordie’s other hand, and began to pull him along. “Come on, lad,” she sniffed. “A nice ’ot meal an’ we will all feel better, that I warrant ye. There is nothin’ more to be done ’ere, nothin’ at all.”
Feeling the earl’s eyes on her back like two hot coals, Rachel dared not look his way again as they moved through the cemetery and cleared the tall gates that faced the street. She’d told Lord Druridge all she knew about her father’s involvement in the fire. He had no more claim on her, and she wanted nothing more to do with him. Her family, or the remnants of it, no longer depended on the mine for their weekly pay. Like everyone else, she owed her rents to the earl’s solicitor, but other than that she was one of the rare, blessed individuals in Creswell who could pass each day without thought of him—and she planned to do exactly that. Geordie would never work in Lord Druridge’s hideous colliery. She would see the bookshop make sufficient profit that he would never need to resort to such work. “Just see if I don’t,” she muttered.
“What?” A winded Mrs. Tate paused to look up at her.
“Nothing.” Unable to stop herself, Rachel checked over her shoulder. She half-expected the earl to be gone, but he wasn’t. He’d moved forward, alone, and dismounted at her mother’s grave. While she watched, he took a single yellow rose from inside his coat and laid it on the small mound.
The sight caused something to snap inside of Rachel. Dropping Geordie’s hand, she left him with Mrs. Tate and, lifting her skirts, ran back.
By the time she reached Lord Druridge, she was breathing hard beneath Mrs. Tate’s old cloak, but she scarcely noticed her exertion amid the flood of emotion swamping her head and her heart. Snatching the rose off her mother’s grave, she shoved it at him.